Results tagged “thecitycouncil”

The Mayor and City Council are facing off over housing regulations that could lower barriers to low-income tenants receiving federal housing vouchers to subsidize their rents. The City Council is attempting to pass a law which would make it harder for landlords to refuse Section 8 tenants, but Mayor Bloomberg just vetoed the Council-passed law.

The City Council may have passed an electronics recycling law recently, but Mayor Bloomberg says it's lame and illegal!

In her State of the City address, City Council Speaker Quinn said that the Council would do its own belt-tightening given expectations the economy will slow. Still, she mentioned, per the Sun, "tax cuts, improved transportation, more pay for teachers, and affordable housing," saying, "Getting leaner does not have to mean getting meaner."

The City Council voted 40-3 to end the tax breaks Madison Square Garden has enjoyed since 1982. It's estimated that the city has lost almost $300 million in potential revenue in subsidies to the "World's Most Famous Arena."

Mayor Bloomberg presented the preliminary 2008-2009 fiscal year budget which inclued cuts to almost every city agency, saying, "Everyone is going to have to tighten their belts." One big reason is the slowing economy and its effects on the city; for instance, the city had previously thought Wall Street profits would be $16.8 billion last year but they are more likely to be $2.8 billion.

3. Brooklyn Bar Lures Drunks With Prizes: What will happen with Pacific Standard's Frequent Drinker Card Program?

Twice a year the Department of Sanitation sets up an electronic recycling event in each borough; in Autumn ’06 they collected 191 tons of electronics and 1,245 pounds of cell phones.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible abduction on Warwick St. and Livonia Ave. in Brooklyn, a police involved shooting on West Kingsbridge Rd. in the Bronx, and an abduction on 33rd St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan.
• A contestant on Deal or No Deal from Bayonne, NJ tells host Howie Mandel that the godawful smell around there is from the dump on Staten Island. Residents of Richmond County are not amused.
• Two pitbulls, one dead and the other severely injured, were found in a dumpster at a Yonkers gas station Sunday morning. Police say that it appears that the two animals were used as bait in a dog fighting session.

New York State's presidential primary elections has been moved up a month to February 5th this year. But if want to participate in the Super Tuesday frenzy, you better make sure you're registered to vote!

The City Council's Committee on Government Operations met this week to talk about possible changes to how much money council members make. Questions were raised about how raises were determined, leadership bonuses, and whether outside work should remain permitted. After a 25% increase in base pay in 2006, council members earn $112,500 annually. They can earn an additional $10,000 a year on average if a member holds a leadership position. In addition, members can hold...

The New York Post profiles a West Village man who's taken to vandalizing cars with incessant anti-theft alarms. Harry Schroder is a retired art director who likes to spend his afternoons practicing the piano in his home on Charlton St. Occasionally, however, he is interrupted by a car alarm. If it goes on long enough, Schroder leaves the car's owner a note in black magic market on an 18-inch by 24-inch posterboard which he sticks...

After some City Council members were caught red-handed using public funds to distribute self-promoting ads to voters--even in election years, which is illegal--the council voted 48-1 in favor of banning the practice. The vote comes on the heels of the release of a report [pdf file] by Citizens Union that showed elected officials spent $1 million in paid advertising singing their own praises during the last five years. According to The New York Sun, city...

The hilarity never ends when talking about cell phone service in the subways. The City Council spoke to the MTA about the agency's upcoming cell phone service plans, and apparently some members suggested that there should be "quiet cars" on the subway. We cannot stop laughing!

Oh, no, is the city going to ban the purchase of Crayola Sidewalk Chalk? The Brooklyn Paper exposes the "new face of vandalism?": 6-year-old Natalie Shea, whose mother got a warning letter from the Department of Sanitation about the chalk drawings her daughter drew on their front stoop. The letter read, “PLEASE REMOVE THE GRAFFITI FROM YOUR PROPERTY. FAILURE TO COMPLY … MAY RESULT IN ENFORCEMENT ACTION AGAINST YOU.”

Police arrested the principal of Eastside Community High School yesterday after getting in a confrontation with school security officers who were attempting to arrest an honors student. The incident began when a 17-year-old Isamar Gonzales entered the school early (7:55AM) and school security officers told her to leave. She refused and was eventually arrested for hitting one of the officers in the face.

Gotham Gazette has a fantastic analysis of what happens to the hundreds of City Council bills that have been introducedsince Christine Quinn become the City Council Speaker. The article points out many interesting things. For instance, out of the 622 bills introduced, 68% of them are never heard of again. About 15% do get hearings, but are never voted on, and only 17% actually pass to become bills.

New York City is cracking down on the brazen theft of tons of goods that occurs right out in public, practically on a schedule. The Department of Sanitation noticed that the volume of recyclable paper it was collecting was down 2% from the previous year - and in parts of Manhattan's East Side, the decline in paper pick-ups was 25%. That prompted an investigation that found that out of state unlicensed haulers were sneaking into the city and grabbing recyclables the night before their regular pick-up was scheduled. Law & Order: DOS Recycling Unit!

Yesterday, developer Sheldon Solow's ambitious plans to redefine the East River skyline were examined in the Sun, as he is presenting the plans to a Community Board today. Solow proposes to build six towers south of the United Nations along the East River, with over 5 million square feet of residential, commercial and retail space.

Ah, the legislative process at its best. The City Council approved a bill to allow students to bring cellphones to school in July. Of course, this flew in the face of Department of Education policy, which has had a ban on cellphones for years (and the ban has been found to be constitutional), because city and school officials believe that phones are disruptive in class.

The Dept. of Sanitation has proposed doubling the fines for those who fail to pick up after their defecating dogs from $100 to $200. The Daily News reports that Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said that since the introduction of the pooper scooper law in 1978, the city has been issuing about 1,000 fines annually. If only New Yorkers could be deputized to issue fines!

If you've ever tossed your junk mail into a sidewalk trash can, you better think again. The City Council is expected to approve a bill doubling fines for "illegal dumping" - and sanitation officials will be allowed to fine people if "identifying information" is found.

The city and state have worked out their differences and will move forward on overhauling the 421-a tax abatement program for new development. The City Council had passed a version last year that would have increased the amount of affordable housing and limited how much of the subsidy could go towards luxury housing, but then the Legislature's version, passed in June, included more neighborhoods, more units available to people with even lower incomes, and $300 million in breaks to Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Ratner Companies. The city wasn't sure about those additions and wanted changes.

The City Council voted, 46-2, to allow NYC public school students to bring cell phones to and from school - though not to use them during the day. The bill was meant to address concerns of parents and students who believe cell phones are critical to students' safety (see these tales of cell phone-less horror). City Councilman Lew Fidler who sponsored the bill said his 17-year-old son walks eight blocks for a bus and "We wouldn't dream of sending him to school without a cellphone. If he's going to be late, we want to know why."

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual sexual assault on Broadway in Brooklyn, an unstable building on Sutphin Blvd. in Queens, and a shooting on West 142nd St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan.
• Central Park's Sheep Meadow was the first park location to upgrade its wifi Internet connection to high speed. The new 15-megabits-per-second service is five times faster than the previous connection.
• Madame Tussauds wax museum in Times Square wasted no time in dressing its likeness of Lindsay Lohan in prison stripes, after the young star was arrested for drunk driving and drug posession shortly after leaving rehab.
• Former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason is in talks to fill the morning time slot on WFAN left vacant by the abrupt departure of Don Imus.
• Williamsburg! The Musical will premiere August 11th as part of the 11th Annual Fringe Festival.
• Gridskipper has a guide to NYC record stores for vinyl enthusiasts.
• Turning Long Island City into a giant sundial, with the Citibank tower as the shadow-casting spire.
• The City Council is thinking of revising its cell phones-in-schools policy, to allow kids to bring them to school, but not use them there. Schools would be required to set up cell phone storage facilities to secure the devices during the day.

Two separate initiatives were highlighted yesterday: one to crack down on New York slumlords and another to cut property taxes paid by New York property owners. The City Council passed a bill called the Safe Housing Act that targets landlords with multiple building code violations. It requires the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development to target 200 buildings annually with repeated code violations and in need of emergency repairs and force their owners to make necessary corrections. If the landlord fails to do so in a timely manner, the city will have the work done itself, and then bill the building's owner. Council Speaker Christine Quinn was vehment in calling out landlords whose buildings are not up to code, saying "“I hope the message this bill sends is that if you’re a slumlord, your days are numbered. If you’re a slumlord, you’d better get your building up to code. If you don’t, we’re going to go out there and bring your building to code for you, and we’re going to charge you for it.” This seems like a good initiative. We just hope the city isn't as lax at bill collecting from deadbeat landlords as it is with deadbeat water customers, because then it sounds like taxpayers will just be paying for renovating slumlords' properties.

Mayor Bloomberg spent Memorial Day at a number of different events in Queens and spoke about a number of issues:

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a residential hi-rise fire on 10th Ave. in Manhattan, a double shooting on Beach Channel Drive in Queens, and a transformer fire at Barbey St. and Pitkin Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Entergy was fined $130,000 for not installing a warning siren system at its Indian Point facility by a required deadline. That would be the nuclear power plant that just had its safety rating downgraded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• The City Council distributed a memo reminding workers that even though Casual Fridays were in effect, flip-flops, shorts, and other too-casual clothing items are inappropriate for city government.
• A mugging by an 11-year-old who wanted another child's change after he bought candy ended with the victim's skull impaled with a stick. He survived, but is expected to leave the hospital for a nursing home.
• The niece of Tom Carvel, the man who brought us Fudgie the Whale, is claiming that he was murdered with poison and wants his body exhumed so an autopsy can be performed. We never trusted Cookie Puss.
• A gravedigger in Yonkers noticed four black bags in a freshly dug grave he had recently prepared. The bags each contained one smoked fish and pictures of unidentified people. Police are investigating but the bags' meaning is yet to be determined.
• The city medical examiner ruled that the jump rope-involved death of five-year-old Monet/Monique Flugham was an accident.
• The shutterbug photographer who caught American Idol lingerer Sanjaya hobnobbing with Gov. Spitzer––or is it the other way around?––is none other than Valerie Bertinelli!
• The case of NYC vs. Deadbeat Diplomats is being heard in the Supreme Court this week.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a double shooting on St. Johns Pl. in Brooklyn, a collapse on Grant Ave. in the Bronx, and a barricaded emotionally disturbed person on 102nd St. in Queens.
• Like Robert Moses in reverse, Mayor Bloomberg wants highways to give way to housing by covering roads like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, as well as rail yards, and constructing housing above them. New York's own Big Dig?
• Ricki Lake's documentary, which is debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival, includes scenes of her giving birth in the bathtub in her West Village apartment. She made her assistant clean the tub afterwards, because there's natural and then there's just gross.
• Attractive adult NYC virgins talk about their decisions to not go all the way in a slideshow presentation.
• NY1 political reporter Dominic Carter requested his mother's medical records after her death. Unbeknownst to him, Carter's mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who once choked him and thought about throwing him out a window when he was a child.
• A Brooklyn yeshiva is serving eviction notices to the residents––many elderly and disabled––of a property it owns to make way for a studyhall and more classrooms.
• 13 miles of mostly straight, flat NY highway that is the site of a disproportionate number of fatal crashes.
• NJ Governor Jon Corzine may just stay in bed and run the state better, faster, and without ribbon cuttings, via video. We have the technology.
• The City Council voted to override Mayor Bloomberg's vetoes on a metal bat ban and pedicab-limiting regulations.

Mayor Bloomberg has veto fever! Last week, he vetoed a bill that would have limited the pedicab industry, and yesterday he said he would veto a bill banning metal bats from high schools. The Mayor said, "I don’t know whether aluminum bats are more dangerous or less dangerous...I have had friends who are professional baseball players call me and argue both ways, but I don’t think it’s the city’s business to regulate that." Ha! What is the Mayor talking about? The city loves to regulate stuff (transfats! the noise a Mr. Softee truck makes! smoking!).

• Today on Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at East 238th & Katonah Ave. in the Bronx, a triple stabbing on 34th Ave. in Queens, and a Fire Dept.-involved multi-vehicle accident at Utica & St. John's in Brooklyn.
• Officer Jarred Barretti talked a man perched on a midtown Manhattan ledge out of jumping. They had a sort of rapport as Barretti had arrested the same man in Queens three months earlier.
• Mayor Bloomberg doesn't know if metal bats are more or less dangerous than wooden bats, but he's going to veto the City Council's ban on them. The City Council appears to have more than enough votes to override the Mayor's veto.
• Matthew Titone, the newly elected and first openly gay Assemblyman from Staten Island, has a construction worker boyfriend who's still in the closet as far as his hardhat co-workers know.
• No need to wait for "Legally Blonde" to open on Broadway, its giftshop is open and selling LB yoga pants.
• Why does Dan Doctoroff hate the children? Plans being discussed for 35-story tower to replace a playground.
• NY vs. NY in '08? Rudy and Hillary outperforming respective rivals in early polls of "Super Duper Tuesday" states.
• Bello the Ringling Bros. clown got his bike back from good samaritan Ricky Robinson, who found it on the street.
• A paraplegic man charged with assault who broke his hip when guards let his wheelchair tip over during transport is suing the city. Also, a paraplegic man was charged with assault in 2004.
• They Might Be Giant's performing two nights at Joe's Pub in May during "secret warm-up tour" for their new album.